It will be a welcome relief to see Pattinson one day cast in a film not primarily targeted at women, or, indeed, one where he is forlorn and l...
There’s no doubting the luscious detail and feel for the period, but the love triangle that inevitable kicks in is a little too rote, ev...
Rolling Stone April 21, 2011 Even nonreaders of the book can figure out what happens next. It’s all in the telling. Sara Gruen provided grit and pungent detail. The movie...
Director Francis Lawrence and writer Richard LaGravenese replicate just enough of the novel’s fantasy to keep audiences involved, even if the...
Isn’t it OK, once in a while, just to enjoy the spectacle of two beautiful people kissing in a train car in the shadow of an elephant?
The love triangle that determines Water for Elephants' dark trajectory is just as joyless and wanly dramatized.
MSN Movies April 21, 2011 If basking in the simulacrum of [Pattinson’s] need-filled gaze is your bag, then by all means…
It’s a tastefully managed, passionless melodrama, full of brooding looks and reasonably sweet moments, but typified by a scantly ch...
Here’s a film in which Twilight’s Robert Pattinson runs away to join the circus – but, amazingly, not as the Incredible Giant...
Witherspoon makes an incongruously squeaky Marlena, and it doesn’t help that Pattinson is about as ardently expressive as a log of wood...
There is quite a bit to enjoy in a film that certainly qualifies as broad-based popular entertainment.
Supporting characters are too hastily sketched in, serving only to further the unsmooth course of true love.
The script by Richard LaGravenese, who is well-versed in adapting popular fiction such as Bridges of Madison County, lacks the sparkle of his best...
There’s a formidable cast here, and on paper, the movie should have a fair bit going for it.
Water for Elephants may not be the best show on earth, but it’s still quite a show.
"Water for Elephants" is a circus tale, full of drunks, tossed-off circus wisdom and forlorn animals, including a beautiful elephant.
Add romantic chemistry to the list of things that fall flat in the film, alongside dialogue and acting.
New York Post April 22, 2011 Usually, you have to wait for the end-of-the-year awards season to see an elaborate period piece that fails as spectacularly as "Water for Elephants."
"Pattinson’s beauty crowds out just about everything else."
The movie may feel at times like a put-on, but it is in fact entirely sincere.
"Water for Elephants" is one ring short of a three-ring hit.
RogerEbert.com April 21, 2011 In an age of prefabricated special effects and obviously phony spectacle, it’s sort of old-fashioned (and a pleasure) to see a movie mad...
The film has a pleasing retro-ness that often mitigates the dullness.
online.wsj.com April 22, 2011 How do I count the ways this movie goes wrong?
Will please fans of Sara Gruen’s best seller, but it lacks the vital spark that would have made the drama truly compelling on the screen.
The great intangible of chemistry isn’t present, making Water for Elephants seem longer and slower than one might hope.
What with its big, lush close-ups of the principals, Rodrigo Prieto’s moody, humidor-brown cinematography, and the life-is-a-circus emotional...
Boston.com April 21, 2011 The movie strips away both the grand weirdness of the circus and the dire desolation of the Depression. Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange are exchange...
From scene to scene, and plot point to plot point, nothing connects. Pattinson, Witherspoon, and Waltz perform in separate rings of their three-rin...
This colourful romantic melodrama gives the brooding Robert Pattinson a break from his customary vampire roles…
Vapidly pleasurable, the film works within a simple and well-worn groove, but it does work, almost in spite of itself.